A network administrator has locked up a multimillion dollar computer system for San Francisco that handles sensitive data and is refusing to give police the password, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.

The employee, 43-year-old Terry Childs, was arrested Sunday. He gave some passwords to police, which did not work, and refused to reveal the real code, the paper reported.

The new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network) handles city payroll files, jail bookings, law enforcement documents and official e-mail for San Francisco. The network is functioning but administrators have little or no access.

…Metro police have had the option of calling for a needle loaded with a strong sedative to control the most unruly people they encounter on the street.

One of the doctors who came up with the protocol said it’s the safest option out there and that it is used all over the country.

But many people said that the injection was news to them, and a top medical ethicist said it’s a troubling precedent.

The drug is called Midazolam, which is better known as Versed. People who have had a colonoscopy have probably had a shot of the drug for the procedure.

“The drug has an amnesia effect, and we use that therapeutically because one of the nice ways to take care of the discomfort is to make people forget that they’ve had it,” said biomedical ethics and law enforcement expert Dr. Steven Miles….

Now, I’ve always been one to argue with my husband about the protection his field has been afforded, especially with regard to natural remedies and the like, but this is a breach that I can’t quite get over. You see, at least my husband was trained to know when a pharmacological sedative should be used and when it shouldn’t. My quibble today is that either a governing power has admitted that the training doesn’t require rigorous standard and testing or they’ve decided that their authority makes such training ridiculous on its face. And, it’s my opinion that the state shows its true color with either answer.

Sadly, for my marriage, either answer proves disastrous; either my husband is a god or a tool- I don’t bow to one and only use the other for hard labor.

It was recently reported that the Department of Homeland Security has expressed interest in “safety bracelets” for air travelers that would include personal information and would not only track the wearer but also be capable of remotely delivering a taser-like shock.

I love to travel and have already curbed it some because of the dog and pony show called airport security. If this is ever implemented, I will not fly commercially at all.

Some humor from CSM: FSM knows that we’ll need some fun after that round of shit…

10. The White House trades in the presidential limo for a Toyota Prius.

9. You climb into your car, but then decide, “Shucks, it’s only five miles. I’ll walk.”

8. Home heating oil gets so expensive that Al Gore moves into a one-bath bungalow.

7. Your neighbor digs up his backyard to grow corn to make ethanol.

6. Food costs so much that news reports start talking about underweight Americans.

5. The president of ExxonMobil starts commuting to work on a Segway.

4. Your favorite “half-gallon” containers of ice cream shrink to 1.5 quarts. (Oops, that already happened!)

3. US taxi companies replace their cars with pedicabs.

2. Congress votes to pay itself in zlotys.

1. Service stations start selling gas by the pint.

I think we could make a comparison to immigration. Some *cough* libertarian *cough* people want to lock the door into the U.S. Some people, like me, wish to leave it open. The problem is that the people wanting to lock it up never think about taking the valuables out of the fucking car. They think they can leave the video camera and iPod on the seat and lock the doors to keep “bad” people out. What they fail to realize is that even “bad” people rarely break into cars that haven’t the lure of an easy payday.

If we, as a country, get rid of some of the entitlement programs and regulations that make even business as usual seem like entitlements to those who haven’t the inclination to pay attention, we could leave our door unlocked. But as long as we allow our government to tax, spend and haphazardly ridistribute the fruits of our efforts, there will be those who demand an expensive, top of the line shitty security system that does nothing but annoy the neighbors.

The owner of a tiny island in off Scotland declared its independence from the United Kingdom on Saturday, saying he wanted the territory, population one, to be a crown dependency like the Channel Islands.

An island free of income tax, sales tax, and government tyrants? Sign me up already!

Hagel’s vocal criticism of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has touched off speculation that if Obama were to pick a Republican running mate, it might be Hagel. Hagel said in an interview with The Associated Press that after devoting much of his life to his country — in the Senate and the U.S. Army — he would have to consider any offer.

“If it would occur, I would have to think about it,” Hagel said. “I think anybody, anybody would have to consider it. Doesn’t mean you’d do it, doesn’t mean you’d accept it, could be too many gaps there, but you’d have to consider it, it’s the only thing you could do. Why wouldn’t you?”

Interesting stuff to be sure and I, for one, do think it’s time the Rs and Ds ditch the charade of party differences altogether and move toward the more apt beauty pageant coronation ceremonies better suited to the media crowning of prez. Look at the “success” the Libertarian Party is claiming by having republicans, Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root on the ballot what with all the media attention. Libertarians have long said that there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between the major political parties and then, in Denver, we (well some) put all our dimes where our collective mouth was and proved ourselves right.*

One thought though on a Republican Obama running mate: He should hold out for the Republican Obama that Bobby Jindal (LA) represents. What a CHANGE! and UNITY! ticket that would be! Gotta love the jackasses that want you to think even less at the polls!

*The LP has long been the third largest political party in the United States and I was, until May, a member and office holder. With the nomination of Bob Barr, it became a third extension of an unholy not a dime’s worth of difference trinity.

via No State

Discourse is so far a very interesting look at how the public actually participates in its own slavery by consent:

I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation! Yet it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the less at the spectacle of a million men serving in wretchedness, their necks under the yoke…

The solution for liberty? Simply withdraw consent.

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.

It’s such a simple idea, isn’t it?

Buchanan’s book is actually surprising me a bit. When I first picked it up, I’d just finished Chalmers Johnson’s, Blowback. The first few chapters of Republic drew the characteristically cynical observation that perhaps the subject matter was, in the late 90′s a fad that never caught on. But Buchanan’s book reads thus far like a very good history book and his warnings have proven spot on. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit though that it is bringing into very sharp focus the idea that empire is inevitable in a world where democracy is championed. It just impossible to for people to vote their interests and expect otherwise and that idea was well developed in Bastiat’s, The Law.

I guess all in all, I cannot get on board with reforming the republic into a mirror image of its past. The American republic was a great experiment but with the stains of slavery and genocide, it was far from perfect. It’s a lofty goal to try to get back to the cherry picked parts of history but until it is recognized on a mass level that the slavery and genocide of the American past have simply been repackaged into a “new and improved” item that no longer discriminates based on skin color or anything other than political connections, most in this country will never know true prosperity.

And so let me now declare myself a truly pragmatic person and say that I hope whoever wins our upcoming elections bring our chains more into the light. Individual liberty may not seem like such an overstretch of imagination or wishful thinking and people may actually withdraw consent when the noose is tightened. I just won’t be participating in the process of tightening that noose by voting for any of the jokers running. Besides, I’m going to have better things to do in November- there are many more fabulous books to read.